Ella is over her "scared" phase

It actually took over a year for Ella to outgrow her "scared" phase.

In January 2008, when she was 6, I took her to a new ballet class where she and the instructor immediately didn't click. She had to leave, she was sobbing.

I thought it was a very temporary case of nerves, but the next week, and the following week, she was really upset during the class and had to manage herself. I took her out permanently after the third week.

What followed was a semester in which she didn't want me to leave her anywhere, at any time, at any class alone, even karate, where she'd been going for over a year. This was very odd because Ella had always been far and away more secure and flexible than Madison in new situations.

Boy, was that one unexpectedly gradual decline in fear; it was only as of THIS January, a year later, that I no longer give thought to whether Ella is going to have a problem if I leave her at a class. I will admit that I cut out two classes for her in the fall semester because I a) didn't want the hassle of having to stay put in the lobby for an hour or an hour and a half and b) I wanted her to have only the classes she loved so that she would stop having the experiences of anxiety entirely.

I had had to decide between using it as a time to teach her to manage her anxiety, versus having her not have it at all, and I chose the latter.

It seems to have been the right choice. She's really secure and happy. I think I could leave her anywhere -- anywhere reasonable, of course -- without the anxiety.

This experience does show how one bad experience can really seize the mind of a child and cause dramatic changes.

Madison can spell

Sometime in the last couple of months, Madison flipped from being someone who can't really spell to someone who can spell just fine.

I'm not sure how it happened. It's not as though she's somehow reading any better or more than she was a year ago; she's as equally obsessed with reading now as then. She's not reading that much more complicated things, not any higher level of nonfiction than a year ago, she reads about 1/4 nonfiction and 3/4 fiction.

It's not as though I have been pressing the spellng issue. We don't do it every day. She's been writing pretty steadily, although even a little less than she was in September.

I can't identify any single element in her education that changed, except possibly that recently I've been doing somewhat more writing on the Frontier Team Book 2 with her sitting next to me.

It really does feel as though she suddenly switched over to knowing how to spell things. She wrote an email note to our nature guide, Liz, on Wednesday. I check things before she sends them out--mostly at her request--and there wasn't a single misspelling or grammar problem.

So, I'm happy, but hmmmmm. It all kind of works in with those learning readiness points I've been noticing, that we have a slow-paced gradual rate of improvement and suddenly shoot up to a plateau. I think I notice these more now than when they were toddlers and preschoolers; then, the new learning rate was out of sight, and while I certainly noticed the milestones, they were closer together and I had already identified them as potential milestones. With Madison, I had resigned myself to gradual improvement in spelling, which has been happening for the past three years. And then, whammo, it takes me by surprise.

Ella's flock of bats

Last night, we had Rochester bat expert Liz Thompson over to our house, along with 15 little Brownie Girl Scouts, for a hike to complete the Watching Wildlife badge. We love Liz, she had been at our favorite nature center until the place was deemed less than necessary by the administration. Anyway, a great hike was had by all, although we weren't searching for bats, of course, not at this time of the year.

Ella drew a bat on the computer for Liz this morning, and then she worked with me in Photo Impact to create this:



We love technology here at Mariposario.

School Specialty Publications sale

For fellow home schoolers:

School Specialty Publications is having a big sale on over 900 items. I went through and got some terrific deals.

And if you spend over $35 (which actually took some doing because a lot of things are going CHEAP), you can get free shipping if you use promotional code HPFS3078.


Here is a link to get to the sale items:
http://www.schoolspecialtypublishing.com/store/default.aspx?DepartmentId=49

I'll take my good news in tiny chunks

I've been sending out about a query per day to mostly agents and a few publishers. And, getting rejections at a slower clip.

I started an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything.

Interestingly, yesterday I noticed that of the rejections I've received, NO ONE had looked at The-Frontier-Team.com web site I'd set up to help sell the book. I send them the standard email query according to their specifications, with a link to my web site. Of the few prompt-ish (within 3 weeks) rejections I've received so far, no one had even bothered clicking through to the web site.

But this morning, someone on an iPhone somewhere in the U.S. looked at it at 6:16 in the morning.

I hope it wasn't one of YOU! :-)

Swaying

In recent weeks, Madison has begun swaying. She shifts her weight back and forth from foot to foot when she should be just standing still, and sometimes even lifts each foot off the ground.

She looks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. And it's driving me nuts. I see her doing it out of the corner of my eye, and it makes me feel just like those IMax movies do, the ones that are supposed to make you feel like you're flying or on a roller coaster. I literally start to get motion sick.

When Madison focuses on her body, she's fine. But when she's thinking about something else or talking or whatever, that's when it starts. I remind her to have a sense of her body, and it stops for a minute or two, then it starts up again. I sometimes take hold of her shoulders and bring the swaying to a halt, to make her notice how very much her body is moving when she doesn't notice. I have even been guilty of a "Madison, for pity's sake! You're making me dizzy!" at the third or fourth reminder.

It doesn't happen when she's sitting, only when she's standing. She explained it once as an urge to feel her legs (knees, I think) moving against each other.

I feel as though I have to nip this in the bud or it could become an ingrained habit. I just can't have her going through life moving like Rain Man. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill here, but it's just driving me crazy. I hope it's a phase.

Under the most benevolent of pressure...

Bowing to convention (in the person of Donald Heath), I have joined Facebook.

Is this the right way for you all to find me?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1201271669&ref=profile

This is actually good news

The literary agent to whom I submitted a query about 3 weeks ago just rejected me.

This was really good news, because I had made a couple of mistakes in submitting:

1) I shouldn't have discounted the fact that this guy preferred funkier stuff than I write.

2) I shouldn't have given him exclusivity in reviewing it. That usually gets more and quicker attention from the agent when you submit your stuff. But you have to wait up until about 3 months without hearing from him before you can submit your stuff elsewhere, when you grant exclusivity.

3) I should have gathered my list of prospective agents ahead of time, to take the time to decide to whom it would have made sense to submit first. See, only a day or so after I submitted my query to this agent, I found another agent who would probably be a lot better.

Last week, at the 2 week point, I spoke with the author whom the agent loves, whose books he edited about 5 years ago. She said that not only does he prefer really funky, off-beat stuff, but that he is SLOW and could take up to the full 3 months to get back to me.

Yikes.

So, I resigned myself to submitting to publishers, rather than agents, for the next couple of months. But yesterday, I got an email from the first agent. He rejected me very kindly, saying that it wasn't anything he could see wrong with my book, just that he likes edgier material.

YAY! I'm free.

So today, I submitted to the agent I REALLY want to sell my books. Non-exclusively, of course...I've learned my lesson.

Fingers crossed. If she accepts me, it might mean that my Penn degree means something, for the first time in 18 years. (She went to Penn, too.)

And today, I spent a blissful 3 hours in the University of Rochester library, researching Washington Medals that were given to American Indians in 1789, 1792, and 1793, for the next book in the series. I even wrote a couple of scenes for this book, and planned even more. It was quiet. I need more quiet. (Not that I'm going to GET more quiet, but I need it.)

A good book day.

Overheard this morning

David, to Ella: "Are you really this cute?"

Ella: "If I AM as cute as I am, how can I NOT be as cute as I am?"

I guess A is A.

Below-board capitalism alive and well in our neighborhood

We had a fierce windstorm yesterday here in Rochester that knocked down a big cherry tree near the sidewalk in our front yard. It also ripped out the phone lines.

I was just coming home with the kids around noon and found our block completely blocked off at the end. There were a bunch of fire engines. They were in front of MY house.

The cop wouldn't let me through. "But that's MY house!" I said, insistantly. I couldn't say it with too much tension in my voice because the kids were in the car with me. I had no idea what was going on.

"Sorry, lady, you'll have to go around the block."

So I did, but that end was blocked off, too. So I turned around, parked in front of my back-yard neighbor's house, and we all trooped through together.

"I heard a tremendous crack," said Lou as we walked. "It's across the street, I think."

But no, there it was, a large cherry tree laying diagonally across my front yard, from southwest to northeast. It WASN'T the magnolia tree next to the house, thank goodness. I love that magnolia, it's beautiful in the spring, and both the kids and I were grateful that it was unharmed, only a few small limbs down. The cherry tree didn't hit the house when it came down, because of the angle. AND, it was mostly ripped out, stump and all. So no need for any of that. If we had to lose a tree, it was the best way.

The best part, though, is that the fallen tree attracted attention, the right kind. The kind that represents the best part of America's get-up-and-hustle mentality. I had no fewer than four different groups of guys knock on the door yesterday and today to ask if I wanted to hire someone to chop it all up and haul it away.

Today, two groups came (coincidentally) together: One was a pair of guys named Jim (both of them) who had been by yesterday. At the same time, the ex-chief of the local fire department came by. HE said he'd be happy to cut it all apart on Saturday for NOTHING, if he could have the firewood. The Jims originally wanted $200 to cut and stack it (one of them does this one his own as a contractor). All together, we negotiated that the Jims would clear all of the twigs and brush today, lop off some of the smaller limbs and stack them for firewood for me, for $100. And then the fireman would come back on Saturday and chop up and take the rest with him.

Sold! ("Boy, you're getting a great deal," the fireman said to me in an aside. I agreed.)

The Jims got to work, after I had them sign a waiver stating that they wouldn't sue me if they got hurt. (Because, who knows.)

It was great. Here is a photo of them with my tree:



The undamaged magnolia is the one on the right side, still standing.

But it gets better yet. I only had $85 in cash on me. I told the Jims I'd have to go to a cash machine for the extra, unless they wanted me to raid the girls' piggy banks for nickels.

"No problem," said Main Jim, after a bit of consultation with Other Jim. "We'll do it for $85 if you give me the opportunity to quote you on getting off the dead limbs on the huge tree in the back."

Sold, again!

So, for $85, I got firewood for all of next year, I got to meet some nice Jims and a fireman, and the other guys who came by but didn't get the job. I found a cheap, spunky guy I like to fix the trees in the back yard soon. And, the Frontier Telephone guy ran a new wire for free to us today. All in all, the best kind of Natural Disaster to experience.

And those gentlemen, they had good, hard, firm handshakes when they left.

I felt so American.

Appreciation

Hand-in-hand with my observations about immersing oneself in what nurtures the soul, I'd like to address an important corollary: expressing appreciation.

I don't mean communicating my appreciation of the beautiful to my kids; that's important, of course, but I'm thinking about something else here:

I mean that one should, if possible, find the person who created the beauty in the first place, and thank him or her for doing so. It's not only justice; it also encourages that person to do more.

I have been thinking about this hard ever since I attended the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in January. One thing that struck me is how incredibly appreciative of good feedback from readers were even the most famous of the authors speaking. They used them as examples in their talks of the real kind of payback an author receives. Royalties are fine, was the implication, but letters from readers are food for the soul.

So, this morning, I emailed the composer who wrote the piece that especially moved me at the concert last night. He is still living. His web site was the easiest thing in the world to find. He lives in California, but he must get up early, because only an hour or so after I sent him a note of appreciation for his artistry, I received this:

Many, many thanks to you for taking the time to express your feelings about Songs of The Slave. That is the kind of letter that brightens the day of every composer. Even when things are not going well, we can remember such a letter and realize that what we are doing does really touch the hearts of many people that we do not even know. That is the best reward of all!

So my point for this post is that we should always try to think about the creator of what we appreciate, and see what we can do to express our appreciation. Especially in times like now, creators need encouragement, and what better encouragement is there than the appreciation for the good they have created? I'm reminded of a passage in Atlas Shrugged where Francisco is talking to Rearden about Rearden's creation, and who it is for:

"Did you want to see it used by men...who could never invent your Metal, but who would do their best, work as hard as you did, live by their own effort, and--riding on your rail--give a moment's silent thanks to the man who gave them more than they could give him?"

"Yes," said Rearden eagerly.

All I'm adding here is that the thanks needn't be silent.

Authors, composers, educators, poets, thinkers, journalists, builders, scientists, entrepreneurs, performers, politicians who do the right thing in the face of opposition... who deserves your appreciation today?

Immersion

My friend Peter Saint-Andre has been writing of late about the need to immerse ourselves in that which is most beautiful in order to have a happy life despite what sometimes seems to be crumbling around us. Remembering this has been comforting. It seems to me that it is my job as a parent both to do this for my kids and to teach them to do this for themselves.

Last night, Madison's Bach Children's Chorus concert was with, as it mostly is, adult choruses and an orchestra; this time, it was the Rochester Oratorio Society hosting the BCC and also the Morgan State University Chorus from Baltimore. The concert's title was "Partners in Freedom: Lincoln & Douglass," and (even to Lincoln- and Douglass-lovers like David and me) it didn't disappoint. The combined choruses did a piece called “Sacred Ground,” which was the Gettysburg Address set to music by David Diamond, some spirituals, and a Mendelssohn piece called Laudate Pueri Dominum. Then, the two adult choirs did a version of Ave Maria I’d never heard and Kirke Mechem’s “Songs of the Slave” from his John Brown’s Opera.

Immersing myself in the music didn't exactly make me forget what is going on in the world, but it did allow the appreciation of The Best Within Us to take the active place in my consciousness. We need more of this. We need more of this in DEFIANCE of other things crumbling.

I hope Madison and Ella look back on their childhood as a time when their parents surrounded them with The Best that is within human beings, and showed them how to do this on their own. There are times and places for kids gradually to start grappling with ugliness, but it's not now. There is no need, yet. The girls will learn about how to deal with ugliness and strife later; now is the time for them to conquer the minor (or major, depending on how you look at it) challenges of learning how to learn, and how to navigate in what is still mostly a beneficent universe. To the extent that they can learn to surround themselves with what is beautiful, they will be able to find those fulfilling pockets of beauty, and create more of them, even if the world is not an ideal place later on.

How quick they learn when the time is right

I realized this week that I hadn't reviewed division of fractions with Madison in a long time, and that I'd never taught her how to compute averages. We have been working our way through a sixth-grade assessment test that I gave her in January, working on the bits of math that she didn't remember or had never learned how to do.

Earlier this week, in 10 minutes, we did division of fractions.

Then, yesterday, in 10 minutes, we did averages.

The same thing happened this morning with Ella. She knows the multiplication tables, so today was the day to move on to multiple-digit multiplication (2 by 1). First I did some where there is no carrying (e.g., 22 x 3), then some where the tens answer has more than one digit (73 x 2) and then finally moved on to the need to carry the tens place (63 x 4).

She needed to be shown it once, and then did a dozen problems on her own, all of which she got exactly right.

I remember spending weeks in elementary school on things like these.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to spend the months it took Ella to learn the multiplication tables. But it's amazing how quickly they learn something new when they are rock-solid on what they need to know in order to learn it, and there is only one more little concept or strategy to employ to get the new skill. A lot of learning isn't like that; you have to learn two or three or even more concepts all at once in order to learn the new idea. We still do that kind of learning, with a lot being thrown at you all at once. But it's worthwhile remembering how pleasurable it is to do exactly-the-next-step learning. I'll try to do more of that with the girls.

Rand books for charity!

Hi, folks. I wanted to let all the Ayn Rand fans out there know that you can bid for FIVE Rand brand-spanking new books on MissionFish, which the Bach Children's Chorus is using for fund raising.

These five books, plus The Literary Art of Ayn Rand, retail for $132 and were donated by The Objectivist Store. I just put them up on the web, and am hoping that the BCC can get at least $65 for them. What a bargain! You KNOW you need some extra (and beautiful, and cheap) Rand books lying around in case someone you love needs a gift, right?

In hardcover, we have:

Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
and
We the Living

In softcover, we have:

Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
Philosophy, Who Needs It?
and
The Literary Art of Ayn Rand

Here is the link to see how much is being bid currently for these books. Right now, the starting bid is only $25.

I'm advertising them on KidsOutAndAbout.com, as I am with all of the other auctions, partly as my little personal means of raising visibility among thousands of readers. It will be interesting to see whether people go for them. But I'm kind of hoping that they will go to someone for whom it actually means something.

Ella finished her multiplication tables!

Imagine waking peacefully in the morning, and opening your eyes lazily.

There is a cute little girl not six inches away from your face, who has clearly been waiting.

"I finished the multiplication table this morning, Daddy," she said.

That was the first several seconds of David's morning.

"Test me, Mom," Ella insisted early this morning. So I gave her the test, and she got every thing right. Still made some backwards 3's and 5's, but who cares.

We're off to Toys-Backwards-R-Us a little later today, a family tradition. When the child finishes the multiplication tables, she gets to pick (pretty much) anything she wants as a prize. I hope it isn't some plastic crap. Madison chose a lovely big stuffed horse when she finished her multiplication tables in December 06.

Kitty in a Package

One of my girls' favorite bedtime games for the last 4-5 years has been "Kitty in a Package." I don't remember who invented it, probably Madison.

"I'm going to be a kitty in a package!" one of them will call down the stairs as they're running up to brush their teeth and put on their pajamas. "We'll tell you when we're ready."

Mostly, these days, it's Ella who is the kitty in the package. (Or the bunny. Or the puppy. But mostly the kitty.) Madison wraps her up snugly in blankets, head and all, in a big lump on my bed, and turns out the lights. I walk in, and turn on the lights. What follows afterward is always exactly the same:

"Oh! Wow! Do you see that on my bed? What do you suppose it is? Why...it's a package! An awfully lumpy package, here. Hmmmm...(poke poke) what could it be? Oh, gee, look, here's a label! Oh, it's for ME! What do you think it is? Who could have sent it? I guess there's nothing to do but open it... Oh, my goodness, look! It's a beautiful little kitty! Oh, don't be scared, little kitty! I'm your new owner! Come here, right into my arms...Oh, look, she likes me! She's purring! She's nuzzling me! Do you want something, kitty? Would you like...would you like some milk? I just happen to have a mug here...you would? She likes it! "

I'm going to keep you and take care of you forever and ever. I'm such a lucky owner."

I'm really going to miss Kitty in a Package when they get older. No sign of them wanting to quit it, thank goodness, even though Madison is 9 1/2. I'm enjoying it while I can.

"Crazy Eights" karate multiplication

Ella is ALMOST done with the multiplication tables. She's still missing 6 x 4, 4 x 8, 9 x 4, 9 x 5, 9 x 6, 9 x 7, and 9 x 9. Yay! Almost there. We haven't really focused on the 9's yet, although she knows several tricks to derive the 9's on the fly, so she figures out the 9's when she needs to, but doesn't have them memorized yet.

For some reason, the eight times tables were particularly hard for her. She is a very touchy-feely learner, and so I suggested that she find a way to use karate to learn it.

Last week, she devised a kata that takes her through each element of the eight times tables. Wow, did that work! She learned the whole group in about 20 minutes and will never forget them again. She says the answer as she's doing each move.

8 x 1 : Figure eight (with imaginary nunchucks)
8 x 2: crescent kick
8 x 3: jump kick
8 x 4: back
8 x 5: uppercut
8 x 6: scoop block
8 x 7: reverse punch
8 x 8: front kick and spearhand
8 x 9: four kicks: front, back, side, side
8 x 10: bow

Isn't that fun?

Why would I blog about cookies?

I know, it seems a little unusual, to be blogging about cookies. But, frankly, I've been getting anxious and depressed about the state of the economy. I can't believe that my worries over the economy have now trumped my worries over defense, but there it is. I now realize it may have been a poor decision for my psychological health to start home delivery of the Wall Street Journal back up again last week. Can it really be true that we've got to parry Keynesian arguments again, for goodness' sake? And socialized freakin' medicine? And when it all starts really to collapse, they're really going to do it, aren't they, they're really going to print paper money. It makes me want to spend NOW on home improvements at a time when my dollar is still worth something. It makes me want to plow under my yard and make it a garden. And buy a wood-burning stove. And store drinkable water.

Anyway, working on something concrete -- like creative and delicious ways to raise funds for the girls' chorus in a way that everyone wins -- helps take my mind off it all. I also scrubbed the bathroom and reorganized the schoolroom this weekend, because although I couldn't manage brainy stuff what with how I've been feeling, I had to get *something* accomplished.

Back to more fun stuff tomorrow, I promise.

Cookies. Really, really good cookies

One of my clients is the Carolina Cookie company. They sell cookies through the mail, as you might guess, given my real job.

The owner, Gary, is the nicest guy in the world, and he owes me big because I found a way to extract data that saved him hours and days of headache with the North Carolina Dept of Revenue, who decided to audit him.

It's also That Time of Year again when I'm in the midst of getting donations for the Bach Children's Chorus silent auction. And, this year, I convinced the BCC that they should put the auction online, gradually, instead of cramming all of the items into one space for the Gala, for people to bid on one night only. This way, we spread it out throughout the community (and beyond, for the things that are THINGS rather than being Rochester-specific) rather than pumping only the people who attend the Gala for that much more cash. So, we're now using MissionFish, the arm of eBay that's for nonprofits.

That's a long way of saying that I convinced my North Carolina guy to donate a YEAR'S WORTH of Carolina Cookies -- his Cookie of the Month club, for 12 months. He was happy to. These are really fantastic cookies, and we just put up the auction yesterday, and NO ONE has bid on it yet. It's worth over $200, and makes a great gift. In case anyone is hankering for cookies once per month for a year, or wants to impress someone for not much money, I thought I would make the few of you who read this blog aware of it. You can click here to read more about it, and bid.

The Frontier Team web site

Hi, folks. I'm taking a big leap here and posting a link to my new web site,

The-Frontier-Team.com

I created this web site in the last several weeks, from an idea I got while attending the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators conference. As I practically think in HTML, it made sense to create a web site to sell the book series to a publisher or agent. This is unusual, I haven't seen any other sites like this, so I hope it gets some attention.

I won't say anything here about the series, I'll just let the site tell it to those of you curious enough to give your comments, about either the site or the book series. The site needs to be simple, navigable, and tell you exactly what you need to know if you were someone looking to take on the author of the next hot series for 8-to-12-year-olds.

I found a fabulous illustrator to draw my 10 kids and their cabin; she sent me the rest of the drawings today, and of course I put them right up. See what you think!

Criticism is VERY welcome. I know you'll be nice.

Deep breath and I'm hitting the Publish button.

Update: Does anyone see any font size issues? The quotes from the book are Times New Roman, everything else should be Arial. I can't tell any font size problems here on my computer, but David swears he saw differences between the pages from work. Thanks.

Madison's new Japanese room

Amid all of the busy-ness this past week was one thing I really wanted to take care of immediately: The previous weekend, David(!) had helped the girls undertake a complete and thorough cleaning of their rooms. Part of what that meant for Madison's room was to move her bunk bed to a different position. Madison has an extremely small room, with two built-out ineffective narrow closets surrounding a window on the short wall. Someday, we hope to bash out those closets, and reconvert what *used* to be a closet for that room but is now a sauna which we never use, attached to the bathroom, back into a good-sized closet. But for now, we're stuck with the closets.

All week, Madison has been absolutely scrupulous about keeping that room spotless. And, she wanted it to be a Japanese-themed room. So, on Friday, we went to Jo-Ann Fabrics, she picked out some gorgeous bright-red-with-gold silky fabric (on sale for $7/yard), and some very classy brass curtain rods, and I made her curtains. Interestingly, she decided that instead of two curtains per window, she wanted just one, and she wanted it to be flat, spread out across, like a shade ("more Japanese-y") rather than bunched up and drawn to the side. Honestly, it looks great.

And then on Saturday morning, for a surprise I went back to Jo-Ann and bought these two beautiful red decorative gauze lanterns (no lights in them) to hang between the windows. And, the piece de resistance, I got one of those little boxy shade lights and a silk red orchid plant for her nightstand.

I have promised to paint a Japanese pagoda at some point for the wall, but that's going to have to wait a while. But I did want to get that room a little transformed, so that was part of my burst of activity Friday and Saturday.

Presenting: Madison's Japanese Room:

Is tonight "restaurant night"?

For about the last four months, Ella every night asks me if "tonight we can have a restaurant." By this, she means that I am the chef, she sets the dining room table nicely, and writes out a menu for each customer (David and Madison). She dresses all in black, and takes a white long-sleeved tee shirt and ties it around her waist like an apron, tucking a pad into the "belt" of the "apron" and a pen behind her ear. I sit down at the table, and she takes our orders with that official, friendly, authoritative, and slightly detached air that waitresses have. Then, I race back into the kitchen and prepare drinks while Ella brings out all of the food that I have set out in order in the kitchen.

She names the restaurant something different each night, names like "The Pine Cone." Often, there is entertainment, too, usually a pianist (Madison) and dancing (Ella).

I love this age.

So busy

It's so true that everything takes longer than you think it's going to, especially when there is REALLY COOL work that you just can't help doing, and little-tiny-detail work that clients clamor for RIGHT NOW and will only take 10 minutes, and these darned cute little critters who really do need to be educated.

This week, I was busy, seriously busy, POWERHOUSE busy, but sometimes it seemed as though I was slogging through mud when I looked back at the end of the day and wonder where the hours went, and could it be true that I only got done 1/3 of what I had intended to do?

I will admit that it was kind of a Bad Educator Mommy week. The kids were essentially unschooled, I was that busy with client work, and a science project review for KidsOutAndAbout.com plus my typical work for that, and finishing up the web site so I can sell The Frontier Team to a publisher (the illustrator is supposed to get me the remaining 10 illustrations tomorrow, when she can scan them at work and email them to me, and I am THAT excited about it, I tell you). The girls watched a David Attenborough series, and The Price is Right every day. It was Break Week here for official schoolkids, so they went to a karate camp all day on Thursday. They read, they did computers, they listened to history, they practiced piano. And, all week we played a really great Go-Fish card game that I made up for Ella to get her past the last 12 problems that she has to learn to get her multiplication tables finished. I KNOW if I had pushed her, she could have finished them before Christmas.

Which brings me to what I've been feeling lately...

I KNOW if I just were more organized, and could focus exclusively on the girls' education during the morning rather than my mind being pulled in a hundred thou-must-accomplish-this-NOW directions, these lovely girls of mine would be learning at light speed. As it is, they're still ahead of the curve by a large margin, and are very, very happy kids. I comfort myself with this. And with the fact that we're all happier with this life we've chosen. And with the fact that I'm much happier creating things constantly, and making money, and serving on their Chorus board of directors (which is practically a part-time job) and working for a different career life (one which, I would love to think, will send the three Ross Women around the country on book tours), than I would be "just" home schooling. So, I know it all works out in the end, but I would still love to be more "super" than I am.

Take my quarterly reports. I like pushing my luck on quarterly reports, I resent how intense the reporting is for New York State, and so I don't do them until the district reminds me. That's my personal little push against authority. But, the district reminded me on Thursday afternoon. And, as easy as these are for me relative to others who can't write nearly as fast as I can, it was still something that was going to take me an hour and a half to do -- one quarterly report for each kid, for two quarters, November and February. So I didn't do them, and I didn't do them, and I finally finished them today and will email them to the district tomorrow.

I need to plan more curriculum, and I need to look at what the programmers have done on my site in India (they say it's ready), and I need to gather materials and enter things in Quickbooks so my accountant can do my taxes. I estimate that these projects will take me, respectively, 2, 3, and 6 hours. Do I have this time, unbroken in the way I need it to be? No. I will have to steal it, either from the girls' school, regular work, sleep, or time with David. And, for each of these projects, there is always the temptation to "just look at email" or other blogs, or local online news, or what have you.

I just looked over this post and it looks like one long complaint. I don't mean it to be. I'm actually very happy. Just very busy. And it sometimes feels as though I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Goodness, it's 7:20 and The Chef (moi) had better get some food on the table.

The Price is Right!

By "The Price Is Right" I am not being colloquial. I really do mean the TV show.

My kids, particularly Madison, have been very interested lately in the prices of things. So, today I thought to myself that it would be fun to watch The Price Is Right with them. And it would kind of count as school.

They LOVED it. They want to watch it every day.

In a way, Madison was over-involved. She wanted everyone to win, and was extraordinarily happy when they did, and quite upset when they didn't. I think she'll settle down after a few times, but it was kind of funny to watch her jumping around.

Actually, they also wanted "me" to win, because I have a much wider frame of reference for guessing prices than they do. They were happy when I guessed correctly.

Incidentally, Drew Carey is now the host. One of our guys! So we even had the benefit of a couple of subtle free-market jokes thrown in for kicks.

It's now on the "To be recorded" list. Yay Time Warner.

A web site, and an illustrator

One of the other insights I gained during my trip to NYC a few weeks ago to attend the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference is that I should make a web site in order to sell my Frontier Team book series to the publishers or agents. That is, this will not be the web site that is ultimately published for the series, which will be used by kids; this is for the publishing industry.

One of the things that I think will make me attractive to agents and publishers is the fact that I already have a compelling web presence and audience, and that I can augment this as I become published. I practically think in HTML anyway. A web presence is, to put it mildly, not an obstacle to me. So I immediately started making the site when I got home.

I realized immediately that even if I'll be selling only the text to a publisher, not any artwork (it isn't a picture book, anyway), my web site would require graphics. You simply can't stick a bunch of words on a web page and expect them to be read; I've learned that with KidsOutAndAbout.com.

So I needed some pictures.

A couple of weeks ago, at the monthly meeting of the Rochester Area Children's Writers & Illustrators, I made an announcement that I was looking for an illustrator. And, as you can tell from the drawing of Max at the top of this post, I've found one! For a few hundred dollars, Mary Warth, who is an art teacher at Brockport High School, will be supplying me with 10 charcoal illustrations of my kids, and one of their cabin.

Isn't Max awesome? When Mary sent him to me as a sample, I was beside myself with delight. Max, who is 13, was adopted from Guatemala, and this picture is just like my mental image of him.

Madison, despite knowing in some peripheral way that Max was adopted from Guatemala, put him with blond hair in her mind just like her good real-life friend Max, so she had to get used to it.

Perfect birthday day

David's birthday was yesterday. The last thing he needs is more stuff, so the girls and I planned a terrific day out yesterday for the whole family.

First, we drove 1 1/2 hours west and south to East Aurora, NY, home of the Roycroft Campus. We had a wonderful delicious, long brunch at the Roycroft Inn. After we ate, we skipped across the street to the Roycroft Campus, where as good luck would have it, they were having a terrific sale on past-few-years issues of arts & crafts home restoration magazines such as Style 1900, Arts & Crafts Homes and the Revival, and American Bungalow. I bought a bunch.

Then, we drove 1/2 hour up to Buffalo, to Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House. The docent on the hour-long tour was knowledgeable and thorough, and even the girls understood everything and enjoyed themselves. This was easily the best-preserved Wright house tour that we've been on, including the Robie House and Taliesin.

Next, at about 3pm, we drove 4 minutes over to the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, a museum that is housed in the only permanent building built for the Pan American Exposition, a World's Fair held from May through October, 1901 in Buffalo. Very good, at least for what it was. They have, in their collection, the original Red Jacket Medal given to the Seneca orator Red Jacket by George Washington in 1792. But it wasn't out yesterday. I'm using this medal as the basis for Book #2 in my series for 8-12-year-olds that I'm writing, and I'll need to make a separate appointment with the curator in order to see it. That's okay, I need to talk with him anyway.

At the Historical Society, they had a model train set that included lots of historic buildings in and around the Buffalo area. One of those was the Eagle House, an 1827 Inn that is still a restaurant. We decided to go there for dinner, especially as it was practically on the way home. Immediately behind it, on Ellicott Creek, was the 1811 Williamsville Water Mill. We didn't get to go in the mill, but we had a terrific dinner in Eagle House.

We got home about 7:30 and all of us snuggled into our bed for an hour. David and I read the magazines, Madison read Harry Potter, and Ella read Calvin & Hobbes.

I don't think I could plan a better day. And, unusual for western New York in February, the weather was perfect: SUNNY! And about 30 degrees. Amazing.

After toasting Abe

At dinner, we toasted Abe Lincoln. Ella, critically examining a glass of red wine and a glass of grape juice side-by-side, asked me whether, if I didn't know which was which, I could tell the difference.

"In this case, no," I said.

"Because, after all," David said, looking at Ella. "What is wine made from?"

Without missing a beat, she replied, with a smile, "Jesus's blood."

We all high-fived her.

Abe, and heroes, and us

From this morning's KidsOutAndAbout.com newsletter, for which I just hit the "Send" button:

Many of us, myself included, regard Abraham Lincoln as one of our nation's greatest heroes. I have been reading a lot about him, lately, most recently Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. We Americans love to amass legends about our historical figures, but from everything I have been able to read, Lincoln really was Honest Abe. His unflinching integrity, his amazing ability to keep always focused on the end goal while working through the challenges that got in his way (and there were many), and his dedication to achieving freedom for all Americans are what attract me most. He had confidence that he was doing what was right, to the best of his ability.

Reading about Lincoln helps me keep these qualities in mind as I go about life from day to day. I strive to be as mindful of the realities of our lives, as able to determine what is important. Lincoln knew that it was above all important to think, about everything, before acting, and to change one's mind when one comes to understand new facts. It is this quality that I try to instill in my children: the ability to think for themselves, and to be confident that this is the right thing to do.

...and more death

Life is full of ironies. Sometimes, you have to hunt for them. But not today. As if to put an exclamation point on last night's death-rumination festivities, this morning's Science Club field trip was to a

Pathologists's Lab!

We saw diseased and normal examples of lungs, hearts, digestive systems, kidneys, bones, and reproductive organs. Seeing all the bright yellow fat buildup around the typical person's intestines made me want to go to the gym and eat salad for the rest of my life. But I loved it. I love that kind of stuff. Anatomy is my thing. Feed me some tidbits about the inner workings of the human body (okay, I guess that metaphor was in bad taste [get it? bad taste]) and I'm happy for the rest of the day. E.g., you wouldn't believe the difference lung cancer feels like compared with normal lungs -- really hard versus floppy and squishy. And did you know that if you have three or four alcoholic drinks one night, your liver is yellow the next morning with all of its processing, but that fades pretty quickly? We explored the hows and whys of an enlarged heart, and saw the heart/lung system of an individual who'd had Down's Syndrome.

My kids were not so happy about the whole floppy-squishy aspect of the morning.

Ella was interested. Ella was minorly squeamish at the beginning, and wouldn't touch anything, but didn't actively turn her face away as a matter of principle. She stood close to the demonstration table, though she did kind of back off when the pathologist was gleefully flipping around the different chambers of the heart to show us the valves that had become blocked.

Madison pretty much sat in the back and averted her eyes--although not rudely--and only glanced up from time to time. She reported she really does like the theory of anatomy, but it belongs in books.

The death issue

Every kid cycles through despair at the idea of death, it seems. Madison first asked me, "Am I going to die?" when she was three years old, in the car, after she had first grasped that animals die. My answer, "Yes. When you're very, very old," took her breath away at the time. She had not been expecting that to be my answer.

I think she has cycled through an evening of death rumination about every two years since then, and last night was the 9-year-old version.

"I don't care if I die," she wailed (while my heart twisted). "I won't even know about it. I just don't want you to die."

Again, I reassured her that I wouldn't be dying until she herself was very old, a grandmother. It wouldn't be while she needed me to take care of her. It didn't help, last night. "If I'm 70 and you're 100 when you die," she sobbed, "I'm already about 1/8 of the way there. And 1/7 of the way until Dad dies." She cried and cried at the unfairness of it all. She cried herself to sleep, with me snuggled next to her.

I don't like the whole death thing, either. What I didn't say to Madison was that I'm going to do my very best that, unlike with my parents, she'll actually miss me when I'm gone. (I mean: I don't miss my parents, and, at least as far as I know, they're not even dead yet.) I did feel grateful that I'm not sending her to school, that the times when we're apart is not one wasted minute.

I'm not sure what triggered last night's episode. Could it be that we'd just been playing Clue by the fire? (All that murder, you know...last night it was Professor Plum in the Lounge with the lead pipe.) Could it have been that we took them to see the movie Hotel for Dogs and the two kids in it were orphans? Maybe a combination of the two? Or maybe it was just that 2-year point. I don't exactly know.

It's not fair to compare, but I'm still proud

On Friday, my daughters got up, had their piano lesson, did schoolwork, and went to karate class.

On Friday, my colleague Steve's son Dan got up and saved a man's life.

It was his first rescue as a New York City firefighter.

I'm glad there are people in the world like Dan, who make being a hero their profession.

And it reminds me that it's my job as a parent to raise children who, if the time called for it, would rise to the occasion to be a hero if necessary.

Artwork in the first observation

Notice how Henri Sorensen, for Robert Frost's Poetry for Young People, paints almost exactly the same scene as Betsey Lewin does in Doreen Cronin's Click Clack Moo. Both use watercolors, but to VERY different effect!

First observation

I was at the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators annual conference in NYC this past weekend, and when I tell you I haven't had a real moment to come up for air since then, due both to catching up on "real work" and starting the writing/publicizing/selling work I was energized to do by the conference, I am not kidding. I also slept very little during the weekend (head cold plus unfamiliar bed plus all the ideas running around in my head) so I have been doing my best to catch up with about 9 hours per night the last few nights.

I have a lot to say about the ideas from the conference.

The first one is, I think, the most profound one for me, and it has nothing to do with my own writing or the selling of my series. I realized something about my own didactic style with my kids, a place where I have been remiss:

I have been rushing them out of picture books. To their detriment.

As someone who is profoundly interested in my kids being conceptual and using their imaginations, as someone who is not particularly visual, as someone who adores the places a "real book" can take her...I have viewed my children's emergence from picture books toward "real books" with pleasure and triumph.

You know what? That was pretty dumb.

For one of the breakout sessions at the conference, I mistakenly got placed in an illustrator's seminar instead of a writer's seminar. Not wanting to make things difficult for the organizers (having been the right-hand man at conferences myself), I went to that seminar instead of trying to switch. What a fortunate mistake! I got to see up-close-and-personal the life of an art director making decisions about how to match the text of an author with the art of an illustrator in her portfolio. And I saw how truly, deeply, these people care about art, about having text come to life through art, about how the art is not somehow a second-class citizen beside the words. I realized how quickly I have turned the pages in my kids' picture books: Just as soon as I stopped reading the text, I flipped the page. Did I ever give them time really to absorb the pictures? Did I ever really absorb the pictures? No, to both questions. Often, Ella would point out some visual detail of a book that I had read dozens of times, and it would startle me.

So, this week, it's picture book week here at Mariposario. Today and tomorrow, most regular lessons are suspended so that we can make our way through the art in our picture books and really see it. For me, it will be as if for the first time. I bet Ella will be able to tell me a lot.

Business cards

I am leaving today for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators annual conference in New York City and I have just ruined nine, count 'em, nine, sheets of business cards trying to get them to print properly. It looks fine on a regular sheet, all nice and lined up when I hold it up to the light with a sheet of business cards. So why, WHY, when I put the actual business card sheet in does it print a half-inch higher? Huh? This is the ultimate in frustration.

They will print properly on the WRONG side of the business card, the kind that is not designed to hold ink. But on the proper side, somehow the printer senses the first horizontal perforation and starts printing there, rather than half an inch below where it supposed to print. It thinks it's smarter than me.

I need the damned business cards.


Update: It worked all right on David's printer. There were still some quirks, but they were manageable. Shame on me for not thinking of that before I wasted 11 sheets on mine. I got 22 useable cards out of that whole package.

An unforgiveable gap in my children's poetry knowledge

A few minutes ago, Madison was reading some book or another while in the bath. She called out to me, "Mom, what are lime rix?"

"Lime rix? Spell it, please."

"L-I-M-E-R-I-C-K-S."

Can you believe I have never taught my children what a limerick is? How could that be? It is true. But I couldn't believe that she had never come across one. I thought we must have discussed it. So I told her one. Actually, I didn't tell her one, exactly. What I said was:

Duh DUH-duh duh DUH-duh duh DUH,
Duh DUH-duh duh DUH-duh duh DUH.
Duh DUH-duh duh DUH-duh,
Duh DUH-duh duh DUH-duh,
Duh DUH-duh duh DUH-duh duh DUH!

She gave me her patented Madisonian you-have-taken-leave-of-your-senses look. So I told her this one:

The tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
Is it harder to toot,
Or to tuter two tooters to toot?

What are your favorites? It would be fun to torture her with more.

I live for afternoons like this

I've been listening to an audio rendition of Gordon Wood's book Revolutionary Characters lately. Wood is an extremely clear writer, who, fairly economically, gives us a wonderful comprehensive introduction to the characters of America's founding.

I put it on here in the kitchen while I've been cleaning and cooking this afternoon. About 40 minutes ago, Madison wandered in with her sewing kit. "Okay if I sit here and listen and sew?" she asked.

(Are you kidding? I LIVE for this, child!)

"Sure. Enjoy."

We've been hearing all about Thomas Paine. Next is Aaron Burr. Madison says she doesn't understand a lot of what is being said, and she's not asking any questions, but she's still content to sit and listen to an explanation of the ideas of America's founding.

This has always been my vision of how life/school/intellectual & personal growth should be (not the lack of questions, of course, but the interest and harmony). I would love to think that this is just the beginning for her.

I'm pretty much done with what I was going to do here in the kitchen, and was going to go work on some accounting stuff downstairs. But Madison is so happy sitting here, and sewing, and listening, that I can't bring myself to break the rhythm.

Think I'll make a pumpkin pie.

Balance and fixing broken stuff

There is a lesson here, some principle to be derived about the appropriate place that "fixing what is broken" should have in one's life, but I'm still not sure what the principle is.

By "fixing what is broken," I am not being metaphorical.

When something breaks -- a light bulb fizzles, a hinge comes off, the pipes burst, a gutter comes down in a snowstorm, your car starts emanating horrible screeching noises from the engine at random intervals -- there is (and by "there is," I mean, "I have") a real tendency to hope that it goes away on its own. Especially the car thing.

Why? Because, in our division-of-labor society where many things are fairly disposable and where schedules are terribly tight, you never know what is worth it to get fixed, or to let die when their impairment is getting in your way.

But then, there is the undeniable pleasure of fixing something that is broken. Especially when I fix, or get something fixed, right away, I take a real pride in feeling grown-up and capable. And, often, it is easy to do, and you feel like a dodo for not having investigated earlier.

Take yesterday. All week, the Subaru has been emitting the aforementioned horrible screeching sounds when the wheels have been moving, but never consistently; sometimes, when turning. Sometimes, when breaking (sorry, Freudian slip typo) braking. Sometimes, when accelerating. I was never convinced that I was in imminent danger, but boy was it getting on my nerves. So, I uncharacteristically decided to take action right away and get it fixed. Called the mechanic Tuesday, got in Wednesday morning.

One hour after I arrived, I was driving away in my happy car. The screeching problem had been the alternator belt; it just needed to be tightened.

But more to the point: Something else was fixed. In the summer, the phalange holding together the front and back parts of the exhaust system had rusted through and finally de-coupled during The Big Engine Blowout when we were downstate. As a consequence, we were sufficiently de-muffled that people on the street would turn and look at the car every time we accelerated. I learned that it would be $700 to get a new exhaust pipe system, and I was damned if I thought it worth $700 to fix a noise. So, I got used to feeling like the teenage guy who lived across the street when I was a kid, the guy who thought mufflers were uncool.

But then, yesterday, after the mechanic tightened the alternator belt, he turned his attention to that pipe. From the waiting room, I heard the unmistakable sound of metal being grindingly severed, and twenty minutes later, Rich came back in, smiling. "Patched it!" he said, triumphantly. He had welded a bit of spare pipe in, and voila.

My car is now whisper-quiet. Or, as whisper-quiet as a nine-year-old Subaru can be. No screeching, no vrooming. And all for $80. It had not been necessary to accept and endure the noise for the past five months. I feel a little silly for having done so.

There is a lesson here, a lesson that goes beyond the truistic, about why we should fix things that are broken even when it's slightly inconvenient and the benefits are not immediately obvious. I just have to figure out what it is. It has to do with the need to take a few simple additional steps, if possible, to figure out the full reality of the situation.

I'd love to hear feedback.

Inauguration at lunch

The girls and I were at a restaurant today; it was a TVs-all-over kind of place, and every set had the inauguration on. I've never seen a restaurant like that be so quiet.

We were seated during Obama's speech. We didn't pay that much attention; they weren't that interested in the content, and I didn't want to hear or dwell on how much government intervention was in the works, how much more I was going to have to pay to fix the auto industry or the health care industry or whatever industry.

But, people near us were talking about the "first black guy to be president," and as I figured the girls were going to hear about this sooner or later, I decided to use the occasion casually to introduce the idea. We don't think of people in terms of race, David and I don't use "race words" to designate groups of people, because it has become anachronistic and, rather than being useful, it gets in the way of actual meaningful ideas about who individuals are. And so, the girls do not see people in terms of their physical characteristics; they really don't notice what people look like at all, unless they're thinking of how well someone's skin and hair color blends with what they have on (like when we're watching What Not To Wear). They certainly don't think of themselves as "white" -- when they find out that some people think this is meaningful, they're going to be surprised.

So, they're naive, and properly so, I think, when it comes to this issue. But I figured I'd rather be the one to float the idea than someone else, who wouldn't know their context. So, while we were munching away, I said,

"You know, some people are making a fuss because Obama is the first U.S. President to have dark skin."

"Why?" said Madison, mildly interested.

"Well, people like 'firsts.' I guess it's the same kind of fuss that people will make when the first woman becomes President."

"Well, even I might make a fuss about that," said Madison.

"Why?" I asked.

"Hmm. I don't know," she said.

And that was that. The exact right level of discussion, I think.

Another accurate observation

Madison, who is a bit less graceful than your average child, was looking forward to a lazy day.

"You know what I like about Sundays when we have nothing scheduled?"

"What?"

"I can sit around all day and read."

"That makes sense. I like those days too."

"Yes, well with me it's especially nice because there's so much less of a chance of getting hurt."

Hard to argue with that.

Update on Disney on Ice

David said it best:

"Just exactly as pointless as you thought it might be."

The content level: Imagine taking notes on the Cliff's Notes version of a Disney Movie.

Speaking of which: Does anyone know why Mulan joined the Chinese Army to save her family honor?

Anyway, the girls liked it. So it was worthwhile on that dimension. And, we do Stuff. As a matter of principle. (Especially when they're free tickets that I get for being a member of The Media.)

It's six degrees! SIX!

It's dreadfully cold, and will actually get colder as the day progresses. It's snowing outside (of course), little hard icy flakes. That's why it's time for...

SNUGGLE SCHOOL!

Wherein the three of us get into my bed, turn on the electric mattress pad, and do school there.

Now I'm almost regretting that I accepted the media tickets for the first night of Disney on Ice tonight. Disney on Ice? Hell, Rochester on Ice!

Disney on Ice is not exactly my thing, but isn't it a law that you have to bring your kids to at least one Disney-type event during their childhood?

Gross? Funny? I'm not sure

I have a new dentist.

He seemed fine, he seemed competent, he seemed personable.

He filled three cavities for me this morning, so my whole mouth is still numb. The girls are at a homeschool activity from 9:30-2:00. I'm talking awfully funny, so the fact that they are doing their thing now instead of talking to me is bad from their perspective, good from mine.

The problem: I'm back at home, and I just found a wadded-up roll of gauze in my upper left quadrant, between my gum and my lip.

I do not know whether to hold it against the dentist.
(No, I don't mean literally.)

Do I?

Young Novelist's Workbook

Madison is relishing, positively reveling in, a workbook that helps kids write novels, called the Young Novelist's Workbook, from the "National Novel Writing Month" folks who encourage us all to write a novel during the month of November.

There are a lot of fill-in-the-blank exercises about characters and plot, as well as theory about what makes for a good novel. The e-book (PDF file) is free, a little over 100 pages. I printed out the first dozen pages for Madison to use during the "15 Minutes of Writing" we now do every day, and she loved it so much she did it for half an hour and asked me to print out another dozen pages. The PDF file is here.

My belly hurts...

Sometime back in December, all four of us went through a bad stomach virus, bam, bam, bam, bam, all in a row.

It seems that neither David nor Ella has gotten back up to par since then.

Almost every day, several times each day, I get a mournful "My belly hurts..." from Ella. We usually give her some yogurt or bread and it goes away. And, she just simply finds that she can't eat as much at one sitting. Then, the belly hurts, but in a different way.

And the thing is, it's worse, much worse, if she doesn't want to do something. That's the stickler for me.

She purports to be very nervous that she is going to throw up, at these times. When this first started, a few days after the illness had subsided, I took it totally seriously. But then, we started to realize that there was little danger of her actually vomiting, and that she feels worse if she's hungry or very full.

I would think that it's just Ella being over-proprioceptive.

But then, David reports that he's still not totally up to snuff, digestive-system-wise, ever since that bug hit us all.

So, I can't tell if there is physiological basis for this all. And, I wouldn't really know what to do about it if there WAS some physiological basis. So, I'm not QUITE brushing all of this off, but for now it seems there is nothing to do about it. Except keep a lot of yogurt and applesauce on hand.

Memorize the Greek alphabet in less than 10 minutes

Thanks to Melissa Wiley, I discovered this link from Steve Demme, the Math-U-See guy, teaching how to memorize the Greek alphabet in less than 10 minutes:



It works! Well, that is to say, it worked for me in one sitting, and it will probably take five or six times with the girls all told for them to have it down pat. Really, you grownups out there, check it out.

I don't know why it actually means something for me now to know the Greek alphabet, but it does. It's a nice little gap that was filled in, and rather pleasurably, too.

Working together on poetry

New notebooks with great photos on the front were all it took to spur a poetry morning here.

They are working together, helping each other.

As Madison said, "Ella is my Poetry A-sister."

A first -- but maybe I should check the laws in my state

Today, for the first time, Ella stayed home alone.

It was only 10 minutes; I just needed to pick up Madison from Science Club about a mile and a half away. Ella wanted to do it, so we did.

We got her a list of relevant phone numbers, including 911 and my cell phone. We made sure she knew that she shouldn't open the door to anyone. She has a level head on her shoulders, and was confident about it being no problem.

While I was gone, Ella actually finished her reading and did her karate practice.

I came back to a smiling nearly-8-year-old.

Madison was impressed and amazed by turns, all the way home. She said that she's too nervous to try it, still. But I'm betting that this changes soon now that she has the proof that Ella did it and was fine.

I don't even know what the state law is about when you can leave children home alone, and for how long. Or even if there is a state law.

Ten years ago exactly

Back up, first, to ten years ago YESTERDAY, December 31, 1998. I was at a client's site in Endicott, NY, training them to use Mail Order Manager. I was scheduled to fly home that evening.

And, I thought I might be pregnant.

I was with sympathetic ladies, so when I told them so, late that afternoon, they offered to drive me to the airport a little early so I could pick up a pregnancy test at CVS. Well, we needed to work right up to the last minute, but I decided I could just get one at Wegmans when I get home. Ironically, my flight out of Endicott was late; I could have gotten the test.

The Philadelphia airport didn't sell pregnancy tests, although of course I looked. And when I landed in Rochester at 10:15, I discovered that:

Wegmans had closed early for New Year's Eve.

Oh, Wegmans, the one and only time you've let me down.

So I had to spend the rest of the evening, at friends', keeping my secret. I found out that Wegmans re-opened at 7am on New Year's Day. So I crept out of bed at 6:45 without disturbing David, and was at the door of the Perinton Wegmans when it opened. I marched right over to the pregnancy tests, grabbed one, and went over to the one cashier who was just opening her station. I was the only person in the store.

The cashier looked at my item. Then looked at me. Then said, "So, do you want it to be yes, or no?"

(Can you imagine what I would have felt like if I wanted it to be no?)

Anyhow, I went home, took the test, and there she was, the cutest little Plus Sign you ever saw.

I went down to my office, wrote a letter to the baby, and then went and woke up David to give him a little New Year's surprise.

10 years ago today.

Madison loves this story.

Interestingly enough, I was at this same client's for the day on Tuesday, on our way down to visit our friends' in Pennsylvania, helping a new employee. Ten years ago minus one day exactly.

The folks at the Wedding Gown Preservation Company love this story, too. And it was a nice bonus that they got to meet the person who had been just a little clump of cells the last time I was there.

This is why I hate the fearmongers

The other night, Madison came downstairs after we'd thought she'd been asleep for an hour. She was sobbing.

She said, "I know it’s just not true about an angry God out to get us. And about global warming. But sometimes I just get so scared. I worry so much that you’re not right, and that everyone else is. That I’m going to spend forever in Hell because I'm not following the rules of a religion. And they said in Engineering Camp that humans are destroying the planet, that the polar ice caps are going to melt and drown everything and we're all going to DIE. Or that the hole in the ozone layer is going to...well, do whatever harm that awful hole in the ozone layer is going to do. Everyone says humans are so bad, everyone except YOU. But how do you know you’re right? You can’t prove that there is no God. You can't prove that there isn't going to be some environmental disaster."

Snuggling her, we explained again, about needing evidence to think something IS true, about the motivations of people who would try to scare little kids and not-so-young people into panicking, about how sober thought is necessary before acting in a frenzy about something for which we have little evidence.

Poor kid. This is precisely why I loathe the fearmongers. (And some say that homeschooled kids are too insulated. Imagine how freaked out this 9-year-old would be if she were busy being bombarded by this every day.)

I found this Walter Williams article from this week, which may help her understand that many, many sober scientists are backing away from the global warming hysterical folks. I'll show her later today.

Birds of the Twelve Days of Christmas

10,000 Birds has their lovely, and apparently annual, post on the

Birds of the Twelve Days of Christmas

We will read it all together this evening by the fire. It looks lovely. (We will ignore the fact that they use the phrase "begs the question" improperly.)

In our circles, this is actually controversial

We, unlike lots of Objectivists, take the kids to a Christmas Eve service, though it's always been a Protestant service; I grew up Catholic, and so I haven't felt up to bringing them to a Catholic service yet. But we always find a new historic church that has some interesting architecture, and take the kids to their early Christmas Eve service, to sing the songs and expose the kids to the culture and to the tradition. Last year was the Presbyterians, this year the Episcopalians. Last night, David hit the nail on the head with his choice of church, and it turned out that my favorite baritone here in Rochester happened to be in the choir. I have been working with him a bit this year on various projects, so it was a nice surprise to see him and be able to hear him sing a solo.

We were 10 minutes early, which meant we were late, the church was already jammed. The usher found us some seats in the very front row. So there we were, four atheists with two little girls dressed to the nines in their Christmas dresses, standing and sitting politely at the right times, under the beaming eye of the nice lady minister and the beautiful choir only 20 feet in front of us, who know all the carols by heart but don't say any of the prayers and don't take communion. Madison didn't know exactly what to make of the situation. She listened carefully to the service and the sermon, raising and furrowing her eyebrows at the logic in the Book of John: "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." She wasn't sure whether it was okay to shake hands for "Peace," even though David and I were heartily shaking peoples' hands and saying Merry Christmas. (Derrick, who had spied me from up in the choir at the front of the church, beamingly gave me the "V" sign for Peace. It was nice.)

We looked so normal. The typical all-American family out for Christmas Eve services, when under the surface, we're these freethinking radical types who are busy analyzing everything that's going on. It makes me wonder what else is not as it seems.

The minister was brainier than most; she was not up to our standard of argument, of course, but in these cases you're starting from a very low standard, so, relatively speaking, she was quite articulate and thoughtful. She talked about some of the discoveries scientists have made about space with the Hubble telescope, and spoke with excitement about the upcoming launch of the Kepler telescope this year. She then did her best to connect it with God and eternity, although that was a little tough. But the point is, she tried. And, later in the car, when we asked Madison what she thought of the sermon, she said it was a little unsettling that something in which she believed so deeply -- science and space research -- was coupled with something she thought was untrue. Ella said that this was the first year that she didn't mind going to church, that she paid attention and understood what was going on.

Then we went out for Chinese food at P.F. Chang's, had a fantastic meal, and went to bed. At least, the girls did. As is also tradition on Christmas Eve, it took David and me a while to finish preparing.

Ella lost the top tooth, finally

For WEEKS upon weeks, Ella has been wiggling her left top front tooth. Delightful to watch. (Not.) It has bothered her a lot in the last week or so; she's been finding it hard to eat. I have been sympathetic.

This morning, after a little pain-upon-contact incident, she stamped her foot and frustratedly said, "This tooth isn't coming out until JUNE!" But two hours later, there it was.

Interestingly, Madison lost her RIGHT front tooth first, at about the same age.

_____

David here with an addendum to today's posting. Ella ran out of gas at dinner. She said she didn't feel well, but it was just a matter of her suddenly being tired, tired, tired. So she went upstairs to sit on the bed and read. After about 10 minutes--we were still working on our spaghetti and meatballs--a paper airplane flew in from the second floor:

I WOOD Likk mom to com u9

Deb's upstairs with her now, I just left them. Ella's happily asleep...maybe Deb too.

Lightbulb Day was Sunday

The girls spent a delightful Lightbulb Day on Sunday with their friends Max and Henry and their parents, like-minded folks who came in to spend the weekend with us.

I would have wonderful photos up in this post of four little blond kids, two 9-year-olds and two 7-year-olds, celebrating reason and creativity and productivity and development, listening to a lovely little speech about it in both English and Spanish. I would with their new technologically-correct presents: A Spy Science kit for each set of siblings, so they can continue to email each other in code; a Webkinz each for the boys (although the danger is that we have started a new trend for them); and a terrific little Sound Science kit for the girls. I WOULD have photos, if I hadn't used Madison's camera to record the occasion, and if she hadn't misplaced the cable. This seems to be the story of our lives, camera-wise, this season. Ah, well, some other time you'll see photos. We spent the afternoon at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, and the kids and the men had a quick sledding trip before the celebration began.

Today's Paper Airplane of Doom

The latest admonishment from Ella to the rest of us via the Paper Airplane of Doom:

This Masig
will saLLF DasRaCD in
5 4 3 2 1

I Hate yoU

Anyone need a translation?

Update: This just in from the second floor:

StoP youR
LaFiG Rite
Naw

Paper Airplanes of Doom

I had written recently about it being almost impossible not to laugh at Ella when she gets into one of her little fits. We have really been trying not to, because it makes her pretty upset, even as it lets her see that whatever is going on is not too serious.

Enter Ella's new M. O.: the Airplanes of Doom.

Nowadays, when Ella gets into a snit, usually -- she admits this later -- for no good reason, she writes what she intends to be a nasty note on a piece of paper, makes it into a paper airplane, and sails it down the stairs into the kitchen.

Today's note read:

I DO NOT WONT
to Have
BRaKFast

Yesterday's was:

I HAT YOU
MADISON

You can imagine how difficult it has been around here, what with the humor barometer almost exploding, but with us trying like heck not to show her how funny it all is.

Lightbulb Day is Sunday!

On the winter solstice, and for the purpose of having just one more thing to celebrate because why not, we Rosses have a little Lightbulb Day party: We celebrate how reason has led to innovation, achievement, and well-being. We give technologically-laiden gifts. We whack a Lightbulb Day piñata. We talk about how life used to be before the Industrial Revolution. We talk about how, someday, the girls' children's children will marvel that their ancestors lived in an age before they had eradicated common stomach viruses.

Here is an article I wrote for KidsOutAndAbout.com about how to have a Lightbulb Day celebration:
http://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/main-articles/lightbulbday.html

This year, Max and Henry and their parents are joining us for Lightbulb Day. The girls are counting the days until they arrive.

And, today, they're making the piñata (the easiest piñata ever--blow up a balloon, cover it with gunk and newspaper, let dry, pop balloon, paint yellow). Hope it doesn't implode like the one for Madison's birthday (a Golden Snitch, looking suspiciously EXACTLY like a light bulb) did.

A corner turned for Ella, a mistake for me

Saturday morning, we had a breakthrough.

Ella, at 7 1/2, has never been an enthusiastic reader, or in any way an independent reader. It has not been something she does for pleasure. For her Half Hour With The Book for school, she usually chooses Calvin and Hobbes. Not that there is anything wrong with Calvin and Hobbes. But she has never chosen to read on her own.

And then, on Saturday morning, she chose to remain in bed and snuggle and read one of her new Nate the Great books. By herself.

There were two other events this week that may have contributed to her doing this on Saturday. Or, it just may have been time. No way really to tell.

The first event was a real mistake that I made. A Bad Mommy moment. Earlier in the week, Wednesday I think, Ella was saying something about how she wasn't really interested in reading, because she doesn't necessarily know all of the words, and she doesn't want to keep running to me to ask what they are.

"Oh," I replied. "Well, when Madison was 6, she just decided that she wanted to read the Boxcar Children, and then when she didn't know a word, she just skipped over it, because she really, really wanted to be able to read. It's not that she was better at it than you, but she was really, really driven."

I can't remember what Ella replied to that, something kind of disparaging I think, because it is overshadowed by the Bad Thing I said next:

"By the time Madison was your age, she had read the first six Harry Potters."

It's not that I didn't mean to say that, it's that I have always positively meant NOT to say it. I do know what motivated me to say it at that moment, that a little competitive spirit might kick Ella in the pants, but still, what a bad idea to have actually said it. It is one of a very few moments in my parenting life that I have positively gone against a Deep Parenting Principle that I hold. I still feel bad about it. Even though...

It might have done some good.

On Thursday night, the girls had their concert at Barnes & Noble. Afterward, I pretty much bought everything they wanted. As Ella saw Madison piling up books in the basket, she was a bit sour. "I don't know what I want," she said. "I don't know if I want anything."

I was pretty sure that this was a consequence of what I'd said, and spent a fair amount of mental energy kicking myself. But then, she piled several Nate the Great books in the basket.

And then, there she was, reading, on Saturday morning. And just now, for her reading for school, she read an entire Nate the Great book to me without pause, and only missed the word "honor" (which she read as "horror").

So, I think we've turned that corner. But I certainly won't take credit. Yay, Ella!

Barnes & Noble coupon today only

My kids sing in the Bach Children's Chorus here in Rochester. I'm on the board of directors, and I have been doing a huge amount of work this fall getting stuff going for them, trying to move them to places they deserve to be but haven't yet pursued. One of the things I am working on is getting the kids to sing at the rededication of the Lincoln Monument on May 30 as part of the Lincoln Bicentennial next year. I also just a week ago got them a gig to sing New Year's Eve at the kick-off to Rochester's 175th Anniversary celebration. They were looking for 175 kids to sing "When You Wish Upon A Star" just before the fireworks go off (at 9:30pm, not midnight -- yes, we are a family-friendly town) which just happens to be in the BCC's repertoire. The goal then was to get another 125-135 kids to sing with us, because we only have about 40-50 who might be able to sing. I sent out a note on my e-newsletter to parents on Wednesday (goes out to about 8000 parents) and got 90 kids so far signed up. So, I'm glad about that, because despite all of this work for it, we Rosses will miss the event--we won't actually be in town New Year's Eve.

They have already sung at six shows of the Nutcracker, and Handel's Messiah (which Madison missed because she was too busy with a stomach bug), and a taping at the local CBS TV affiliate. They'll sing next Friday night, too. And last night, the kids sang at Barnes & Noble, which has a wonderful donation division for nonprofits. We set it up so that 10% of all purchases at B&N anywhere in the country, yesterday and today only, will go to the Bach Children's Chorus of Rochester, NY. You have to give them a coupon at the register.

So, on the total off-chance that you happen to be heading to Barnes & Noble today, can you use the coupon? Thanks. Here is the link to the PDF file for you to print out:

http://bachkidsusa.org/PDF/BNFundraiser.pdf

"It's a Wonderful Life"

As some of you know, David and I have been writing a "Book of Madison" and a "Book of Ella" since we first knew of the girls' existence.

Tonight, we watched Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, which we do every year during the Christmas season.

David always talks so beautifully about why he loves this movie, and I asked him to write it out this evening for the Books of Madison and Ella. I thought these two passages were particularly worth sharing here:

It’s a film about real people with real values, values that matter, values that make life worth living; that is, values. The particular values, and the ways in which the characters in the movie pursue them, are not precisely ours. But the word precisely is important there, because we do share many of the film’s values, and we do live much as the Baileys do. The film is about a man who is dedicated to doing what’s right. George doesn’t just pursue his values with zeal, he pursues them because they’re right, because he refuses to let evil win. It’s true that George’s frustration with his life lends the film a melancholy air, the fact that he is stifled in the pursuit of his youthful desires is sad. But what the film is about is not that, it’s George’s success, his brilliant success, in an ultimately benevolent world that recognizes his integrity.

George holds his integrity, he lives by the principles he thinks are right, even as injustices, big and small, bombard him because of his integrity. The stress becomes intense, and George is ready to give up his life, but not his principles. On the bridge, George no longer needs to live—he thinks he needs to die—but he still does the right thing when Clarence seems to be drowning. By George’s principles, when a drowning man needs help, you dive in and save him. And he does, and—and this is what I love most about the film—this act of integrity saves George’s life. And we see, in the end, that the world—in the film, the people of the town—recognize the value of a man like George. George, in the end, is rewarded for his integrity, he is rewarded for being a good man. This sort of life, a life in which a person is rewarded for virtue, is indeed a wonderful life.

Doesn't he put things well? :-)

I have known Objectivists who have, well, objected strongly to this movie on the basis of altruism. So I think what David wrote here is well worth considering.

The Christmas Rush

For me, the Christmas rush started even before Thanksgiving: My clients have really ramped-up their need for reports, for some reason. I would have thought that with the economic climate, the first thing to go for mail-order businesses would have been The Consultant, but it seems not, at least for an appreciable number of them. I've been busy writing reports that analyze trends from past years and incorporate 2008 numbers so that my clients can try to predict what is going to happen this year. I've also been writing reports that extract exactly which customers are likely to purchase certain types of products in the November-December time frame, so my clients can suck them out of their systems and email the heck out of them with promotions. Sorry if you're on the receiving end of that.

Anyway, between Thanksgiving guests, six Nutcracker performances to which Madison had to be ferried on the three days after Thanksgiving (the Bach Children's Chorus sings the Waltz of the Snowflakes at the end of the first act...this is the performance with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rochester City Ballet), cooking down the turkey bones into stock, and writing client reports, it has been a busy week.

I suppose that to a small extent my clients' anxiety has infected me. I started being anxious even before Thanksgiving that I hadn't really started my Christmas shopping yet, even though I actually had ordered some beautiful books from First Folio Society. Madison has also talking about a remote-control spy plane that she saw in a Discovery Channel Store catalog in October. The plane had a little camera that allowed you to take photos from 500 feet in the air. Now, you and I can imagine how crappy these photos are likely to be, but you can't exactly say that to a nine-year-old with stars in her eyes and an imagination on fire.

I kind of hoped she'd forget about the plane, given that it is pretty expensive. Nope. She's talked about it for the past month. So I sighed on Sunday and went to buy it. Small snag: out of stock. I then looked at some reviews of the particular plane and was not encouraged by what I saw. But I did some more online work and found a comparably-priced plane with a camera (I only found 2 or 3 on the market that had cameras) that got better reviews. I found it for a reasonable price on eBay from a Toronto seller. So, fingers crossed.

The Folio Society is in Great Britain, and the books I'd ordered only last week came yesterday. I thought sure they'd have a U.S. distribution center, but they arrived yesterday all marked Air Mail. The cardboard box came in a nice fastened burlap sack so that no one could tell what they are. Unfortunately, I didn't think, and I opened the burlap sack practically in the girls' presence, and there, stamped in big letters on the side of the shipping box, was Harry Potter Boxed Set. Sigh. One surprise down the drain. That's okay, she's excited. And she doesn't know about the treasure chest.

But the best present so far is the dollhouse. My girls have wanted an elegant dollhouse for a while, I think mostly due to my telling them about the house I had when I was a kid, so I thought it was time to do it before they got too old. (Is this house as much for me as for them? Yes. Hush.) I was investigating prices this weekend. Geez Louise! Sellers want over $1000 even for a KIT! It made me think I'm in the wrong industry, that I should go out and get me some boards and a jig saw and start my own business. So, off to Craigslist I went. Saturday night, I found an amazing one. I emailed the folks immediately; turns out they are an elderly couple who live near where the girls have gymnastics. I snuck over to their house last night when the girls had their class. The husband made it for the wife in the 1970s some time after they married, and they spent 10 years building and decorating and wiring it with actual lights. It's a lot sturdier than the flimsy dollhouses that you can buy as a kit to build, and they sold it to me for less than 1/10 the cost of a new dollhouse. I felt a little guilty, like I should tell these nice people that they were selling it for too little (especially since the wife just had a liver transplant), but instead I showed them photos of the girls and talked about how long they would use it, and how the girls' children will use it too. They liked that. David is going to pick it up tonight while I have the girls at choir rehearsal. It is going to be great under the tree. Or, rather, overshadowing the tree. It's that big.